Ayn Rand vs. Marilyn Monroe

April 19, 2011

I remember the first time I saw one of my profs at university light up a pipe. It looked intellectual. I took up the pipe myself. Although I think I spent more time cleaning the damn thing than actually smoking tobacco. It was so bloody pretentious. And there were a lot of pipe smokers at college, more than you’d find in the population at large. The French intellectuals knew better. They smoked cigarettes to look intelligent. Its because they think they are one with the workers. Or so I imagine. (I don’t really know since everyone in France seems to smoke cigarettes.) But role playing seems so much of the mask that people use who are trying to look intelligent. That’s what I see in Ayn Rand. And that’s what I think makes pseudo-intellectuals so… distasteful. They haven’t grown up. Their child like behavior is annoying. A while ago I was surprised to see photos of Carl Sandberg with Marilyn Monroe. What an odd couple. I remembered that Ms. Monroe had been married to Arthur Miller. Miller once called Marilyn “a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes.” Monroe had the right idea for a legitimate intellectual. She was curious.